


The Crossbow Goes or I Do

by Cartadwarfwithaheartofgold (manka)



Series: Good, Clean Fun of a Sort: The Secret Love Story of Elodie Hawke and Varric Tethras [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Banter, F/M, Flirting, Friends to Lovers, Hawke is a menace, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Mage Hawke (Dragon Age), Mutual Pining, Mutually Unrequited, POV Varric Tethras, Past Bianca Davri/Varric Tethras, Pre-Relationship, Purple Hawke (Dragon Age), They did their pining, Varric Tethras' Chest Hair, ten years of it apparently
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-19 06:01:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29870241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manka/pseuds/Cartadwarfwithaheartofgold
Summary: Elodie Hawke is a menace that fits just right into Varric's life and keeps him on his toes. AfterThe Incidentwith misfiring Bianca, Varric knows he'll let her get away with anything....except it's hard to let her get away with leaving.
Relationships: Female Hawke/Varric Tethras
Series: Good, Clean Fun of a Sort: The Secret Love Story of Elodie Hawke and Varric Tethras [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2050515
Comments: 7
Kudos: 19





	The Crossbow Goes or I Do

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you [@serphena](https://serphena.tumblr.com/) for your lovely prompt!

Varric doesn’t know how _The Incident_ happened.

Well, that’s not strictly accurate. He knows Hawke the way he knows the best ways to sneak around the Guild Hall, where to purchase the _good_ ink, and how much it’ll cost to bribe Corf when Rivaini gets carried away. He’s well aware of what she gets up to when she’s unsupervised.

Hell, usually when she’s supervised too. The woman is a force of nature and they’re just along for the ride.

What does surprise him about _The Incident_ , as it’s known forever after, is how quickly it happened. He swears up and down every time it comes up in conversation afterward he only looks away from Hawke for a _moment_. One second, he’s peering down at the short story that eventually became his bestselling Hard in Hightown series, the next…

The sound of a bolt rattling into Bianca’s chamber, the whoosh of another flying through the air, followed quickly by his large, ornate, absolutely atrocious dressing mirror shattering into a million pieces.

He’s better off without it. Honestly, the most upsetting part of the whole sequence of events is that he isn’t holding Bianca.

Varric doesn’t look up from his papers. The room is completely quiet.

“Hawke.”

“Varric.”

He appreciates the deadpan delivery of his name. He really does. Odd how quickly Hawke wormed her way into that special, stupid part of his heart that forgives almost anything. She’s barely off the boat at this moment, fresh faced and lively if a bit too hungry looking.

He’s known her for a few months. And, bizarrely, he feels like he’s known her all his life.

“That sounded like Bianca,” he observes, as if he wouldn’t know the way Bianca sounds anywhere.

“Well, that doesn’t make any sense,” Hawke chirps. “ _Somebody_ told me that Bianca is a delicate, complicated lady who can only be fired by one _specific_ dwarf who was trained in her secrets by an Antivan Crow whose life the dwarf saved.”

He finally looks up to take in the damage. Mirror shattered, bolt in the wall behind it, and Hawke standing shamelessly in the middle of the room cradling _his_ crossbow.

“Somebody _also_ told you not to touch her,” he adds pointedly.

Hawke grins from ear to ear. “We’ve already established _somebody_ is full of shit.”

He discards his journal and glides back across the room, arms out and a carefully maintained disgruntled look on his features. “Come here, beautiful. What’d she do to you?”

Hawke takes a step back, eyes widening in clear afront. “What did I do to _her_? Varric, she’s drawn blood!”

“I told you she’s a sensitive lady. Difficult to handle. Little rough around the edges.”

“She’s a _menace_ Varric.” Hawke relinquishes the crossbow and examines her fingers with a wrinkled nose. On her left ring finger is a nice cut, blood welling and dripping down her palm. “Look what she did!”

There’s a smear of crimson on the trigger. He wipes it away with his shirt sleeve. “ _You_ got your fingers stuck in the gears. _She_ taught you a lesson about respecting other people’s property.”

“It’s going to scar!”

“Let me send an urgent note down to Darktown for Blondie. He’ll be thrilled to come stitch together your papercut.”

She laughs and puts one palm on the curve of her hip, leaning into his space. “I’m telling you Varric, the crossbow goes or I do.”

Something lurches in his stomach, a hint of fear he doesn’t quite have a name for, a bit of knee jerk panic at the thought of losing the last bit of _her_ he truly has. But Hawke’s joking, Hawke is _always_ joking, he can see the sparkle in her blue eyes and the twitch at the corner of her lips.

He lets his own tip up in the same playfulness. “You better clean up this mess before you go.”

She sighs in defeat and plops her finger between her pink lips, sucking on it thoughtfully while she looks at the chaos she’s caused. Varric spends a second too long examining the way her cheeks hollow around her finger.

He’s only a man, after all, no matter how taken he is.

“How much bad luck is it to break a mirror again?” she asks.

Varric doesn’t believe in human superstitions, or much of anything beyond the worth of his coin or the power of a well-loved lie, but he answers her. “Seven years at least. And just in time for our expedition too.”

Another moment of silence. Then one single, elegant curse. “ _Bollocks_.”

* * *

Somehow, Varric gets stuck with the job of keeping Hawke in bed.

Privately, he thinks Blondie must be out to get him for humiliating the mage in more than one card game. Otherwise Varric wouldn’t get saddled with the most impossible job in Kirkwall. Their newly crowned Champion, and what a laugh _that_ is, sits in her opulent bed wearing nothing but the rattiest shirt he’s ever seen. It’s so large it hangs off one freckled shoulder.

Varric wonders if it isn’t one of Carver’s old hand-me-downs. It’s better than thinking Hawke was plucking her nightclothes out of some moldy trunk in Lowtown, anyway.

Her icy eyes glare daggers into him from where she’s propped against the headboard. “Varric, if you don’t help me out of this bed I will chop Bianca into firewood.”

“Remember what happened the last time you got into a tussle with Bianca?” Varric asks, raising his eyebrows.

“I still have the scar!” she protests, trying weakly to push herself up off the bed. The covers slip, revealing the bandages wrapped around Hawke’s waist. Before Anders got his hands on her, bandages like those were the only thing holding Hawke’s guts inside her.

Varric knows. _He_ put them on.

“You’re gonna have a better one now. Comes with a heroic story and everything.” A story where Varric stands, clutching his crossbow, helpless and afraid as a sword pierces Hawke’s body and hoists her off her feet. A story where she summons a fistful of fire to smother the Arishok as she’s impaled on his blade.

Varric’s still covered in a cold sweat and it’s been four days. Andraste’s _ass_ , what would he have done if…?

But it’s not worth thinking about. He can’t face it in this bright bedroom, with Hawke and the mutinous gleam in her eyes. She swings them from his face to the window, her expression wistful.

It tugs at his heartstrings, it really does. Hawke has barely spent a night in this mansion in Hightown since they dragged Leandra’s body from the monster’s pit and held a quiet, solemn funeral at the Chantry. She bunks at a spare cot in Anders’ clinic, crashes on the moldy old chaise in Fenris’ mansion, falls asleep in Merrill’s bed while Daisy sits in front of her damned mirror all night.

But, more often than not, she’s in Varric’s bed and he’s in his armchair. Or _she_ falls asleep in the armchair and refuses to be moved. Varric should complain, it’s ridiculous that he’s sharing one suite of rooms while she’s got a whole damn house, but he doesn’t. He can’t.

He knows what it’s like to live in a mausoleum to the dead.

In truth, Hawke has not come home to stay since it stopped being a home, and now she’s trapped there with her guts shoved back in and a title she could care less for.

“Play a game of Diamondback with me,” he cajoles. “You win, I’ll risk my chest hair and get you into the garden against the doctor’s orders.”

Hawke bites her lip and considers his offer, narrowing her eyes. “You cheat.”

“And if you pay attention, you may learn something to improve your own lackluster technique.” He pulls the cards from his pocket and hops up, in a painfully undignified fashion, onto her ridiculously high bed. The action brings a spark of humor to her gaze.

“I won’t be distracted by your ridiculous cleavage today, serah,” she teases, watching him shuffle the cards. In the brief moment of silence, Varric catches the way she runs her thumb over her finger, tracing the small silver scar Bianca left all those years ago. It’s a habit he’s noticed with fondness when she’s plotting, and it should worry him to see her scheming…

But honestly, he’d rather have her scarred and scheming than not have her at all.

* * *

They stand on the docks with the world on fire around them when Varric _finally_ runs out of things to say.

There’s a joke here... somewhere. He struggles to find it while Hawke stares over his head at the ruined landscape of Kirkwall. He could say something about how she sure knows how to make an exit, but the thought of her exit sticks in his throat, deep in his chest.

Kirkwall without Hawke makes no sense. _Varric_ without Hawke makes no sense, and when did _that_ happen?

She’s leaving and he’s staying. It’s what they need to do. She’ll be free as a bird to ignite the revolution she’s become the figurehead of, thanks to Blondie, and he’ll be here to confuse and confound the authorities while he tries to put his home back together.

But, somehow, it feels like his home is about to get on Isabela’s ship.

“Look on the bright side, Varric.” He looks up into Hawke’s face. She’s got her best Champion smile plastered on, the one that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “We’ve almost burned through those seven years of bad luck, right?”

 _The mirror._ Her face without the wrinkles of worry at the corner of her eyes, on her forehead, Bianca in her arms and a smile on her face. Varric’s chest constricts painfully.

The Hanged Man is gone. Hawke is leaving. All he’s got is Bianca on his back and a pile of trouble _again_.

“You’ll always have the scar though,” he jokes weakly.

She looks down at her hands. Varric wonders if she can see blood on them, even though she’s done _everything_ she could have. The scar from her run in from Bianca is merely a thin white line across her finger, but his eyes go there immediately.

He doesn’t know what possesses him, but it feels right to snatch that hand out of the air. Long fingers curl immediately over his leather gloves and her blue eyes flick to his face.

It’s a bad idea, but he’s too committed to stop now. He brings her knuckles to his lips like she’s a fairytale princess instead of the biggest menace he’s ever known, like he’s a knight instead of a cheating scoundrel. His lips brush over that thin scar softly before he pulls away, looking up into Hawke’s eyes.

She swallows, hard, and Varric swears he sees tears in her eyes behind a watery smile. Varric’s words are still missing, lost somewhere in the rubble around them, but he has to try. “Hawke-”

She pulls her hand from his and drops it to the side. “Well Varric,” she begins behind her brittle smile. “I’ve been telling you for years. That crossbow goes or I do.”

For a brief, insane moment Varric considers slinging his beloved Bianca over his shoulder and into the harbor. It passes just as Hawke stoops to envelop him in her too long arms. He just catches her whisper. “I’ll miss you.”

“Yeah,” Varric swallows his own bitter emotion. “Me too, Elodie.”

That makes her laugh and lightly punch his shoulder as she withdraws. He barely gets a look at her tearstained face before she flees up the gangplank and onto the boat, leaving him bereft.

“If you were waiting for an opportune moment, you have missed it,” Fenris remarks acidicly behind him.

Varric ignores the remark and the ridiculous insinuation behind it as Fenris appears in his line of sight. His love life is complicated enough, after all. “I can afford to let her go, _she_ doesn’t owe me five sovereigns.”

The familiar, immediate refrain is almost comforting. “I’m good for it.”

Varric huffs a small, broken laugh. “No you’re not.”

“You are not incorrect,” Fenris _finally_ admits. The elf casts a look behind him for a moment before adjusting the pack over his shoulder. “I wish you well, my friend.”

The bastard has enough decency not to add Varric will need it. “Watch her back, Broody.”

“I will attempt to do so,” Fenris murmurs, shoving past him. “Although nobody does it as well as you.”

Varric watches him go with a heavy weight in his stomach.

 _That_ is exactly what he’s afraid of.

**Author's Note:**

> Accepting prompts for Varricmance March Madness at [@cartadwarfwithaheartofgold](https://cartadwarfwithaheartofgold.tumblr.com/)


End file.
